Clark County public works official placed on leave

A top Clark County public works official has been placed on administrative leave while the county continues to investigate a potential conflict of interest involving his wife’s firm, a spokesperson has confirmed.

The county’s construction management division oversaw the award of a multimillion-dollar contract to a team that included Rock Solid Project Solutions. Rock Solid is owned by Raquel Floyd, the wife of Jimmy Floyd, who manages the division.

“Jimmy Floyd has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation,” Jennifer Cooper, a county spokesperson, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an email Wednesday. He was placed on leave on May 22, she said.

Meanwhile, a complaint regarding the potential conflict has been filed with the state ethics commission.

Jimmy Floyd has not returned phone calls requesting comment. He previously referred the Review-Journal to the county’s public information officer. Raquel Floyd, who has not responded to previous requests for comment, did not respond to a request Thursday.

In December, the county awarded a $10 million construction management contract to Diversified Consulting Services, which teamed up on its proposal with Rock Solid, which stands to make $1.5 million on the contract.

The issue of a potential conflict of interest was raised in an anonymous complaint sent to county officials in December and later obtained by the Review-Journal. The complaint said the contract’s requirements were unusually specific and appeared to give Rock Solid’s team a decisive advantage.

In response to a reporter’s questions, Cooper previously said Jimmy Floyd prepared the request for qualifications for companies seeking the contract, which is the document used to demonstrate a firm’s qualifications. The contract is to provide construction management services for the Clark County 215 Beltway & Summerlin Parkway Interchange Project, which at $130 million is the largest of the county’s current projects.

Jimmy Floyd also served as one of five evaluators of the companies’ proposals, Cooper confirmed. Three evaluators gave their highest scores to a different firm, according to the evaluations, obtained by the newspaper through a public records request. The Diversified Consulting Services/Rock Solid proposal received the highest number of total points. The county refused to identify which evaluation was Jimmy Floyd’s.

“The County continues to assert the privacy of the evaluators,” Cooper said.

Jimmy Floyd also prepared the statement of qualifications for companies seeking to prequalify for construction management contracts on public works projects of $10 million or less, she said. In this process, Rock Solid was ranked second by construction management staff on a list of four prequalifying firms. Although Jimmy Floyd was not an evaluator, the county said, onlookers have questioned how staff could credibly evaluate a company belonging to the boss’s wife.

Over the past four years, Rock Solid has been paid $442,200 as a subcontractor on county construction management contracts, primarily as a scheduling consultant, according to documents obtained from the county through a records request.

Cooper said the county, which she said mitigates conflicts with primary contractors, is working to establish a process to identify conflicts of interest with subcontractors.

Chairman pledges county transparency

Jimmy Floyd, who began as the division manager in November 2018, filed a county financial disclosure statement in April 2019 and again in March of this year reporting a direct financial interest in Rock Solid. The 2019 report states that he released all ownership rights.

Filing an annual disclosure statement is generally insufficient for compliance with Nevada’s ethics statutes pertaining to a conflict of interest, said Ross Armstrong, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Ethics. Disclosure must be made when a matter is being considered, he said.

Staff reports accompanying the related agenda items before the Clark County Commission did not mention the potential conflict. The commission approved the items without discussion as part of its consent agenda, where a batch of ostensibly routine items are approved in a single vote.

The state ethics law also prohibits public officers or employees from using their positions in government to secure or grant unwarranted advantages for any business entity in which they have a significant pecuniary interest or for any person to whom they have a commitment in a private capacity.

A complaint about the potential conflict of interest was filed May 7 against Jimmy Floyd with the ethics commission. A copy of the complaint, filed anonymously, was provided to the Review-Journal, along with a receipt from the agency.

The commission can’t comment on a complaint, or even confirm one has been filed, until such time as a panel makes an initial determination of its merit and forwards it to the full commission for an opinion, according to Armstrong, who said the process typically takes months.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the County Commission pledged that the county would be transparent about the results of its investigation, noting that the issues as presented in the newspaper’s articles “raise serious concerns.”

“If there’s corrective action taken, individually or in respect to county procedures, that will be fully disclosed,” Commission Chairman Tick Segerblom said in an interview.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on X. Hynes is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.